Was I very gleeful, settled, content, during the hours I passed in yonder bare, humble schoolroom this morning and afternoon? Not to deceive myself, I must reply -- No: I felt desolate to a degree. I felt -- yes, idiot that I am -- I felt degraded. I doubted I had taken a step which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence. I was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of all I heard and saw round me. But let me not hate and despise myself too much for these feelings; I know them to be wrong -- that is a great step gained; I shall strive to overcome them. To-morrow, I trust, I shall get the better of them partially; and in a few weeks, perhaps, they will be quite subdued. In a few months, it is possible, the happiness of seeing progress, and a change for the better in my scholars may substitute gratification for disgust.

Meantime, let me ask myself one question -- Which is better? -- To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort -- no struggle; -- but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress; delirious with his love half my time -- for he would -- oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while. He DID love me -- no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace -- for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me -- it is what no man besides will ever be. -- But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles -- fevered with delusive bliss one hour -- suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next -- or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?